Which book to read ?

So many... but you might enjoy 'White Light', by Rudy Rucker. It's somewhat about infinity, and is lots of fun.

en.wikipedia.org

White Light (novel) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

Rudy has put it online here:-
OK, a couple more.

Touch the earth, by T.C. McLuhan; this one gave me some perspective...

archive.org

Touch the earth : a self-portrait of Indian existence : McLuhan, T. C : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

Includes bibliographical references (p. 179-185)
archive.org

A canticle for leibowitz, by Walter Miller. Let's hope what he was writing about doesn't happen. Although in some ways, some of it already has.

en.wikipedia.org

A Canticle for Leibowitz - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

The place in the forest, by R.D.Lawrence. I loved reading this when I was a kid. I still love walking in the forest :-)

www.goodreads.com

The Place in the Forest

A number of years ago, R.D. Lawrence acquired a patch o…
www.goodreads.com www.goodreads.com
 
Alain De Vos said:
Which book ... would you advise to read.
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That depends on your purpose for reading! For pleasure I recommend reading fiction. For learning about different cultures, read authors from different cultures. For imagination read sci-fi. For thinking read philosophy. For improving skills/habits read self-help books. For knowledge/learning read subject specific or technical books. And so on.
 
I read for fun, to feel good. To keep my brain active. Mostly all genres with alternation. And it's not expensive as hobby as opposed to ...
 
one cannot read technical books only
everyone needs to find her or his balance between learning (self-development) and entertainmaint

Nathaniel Branden, "Honoring the Self"

Clifford Stoll, "The Cuckoo's Egg"

also started to read philosophy
if it's not something that tries to prove the existent of god
it at least tries to figure out the higher goals in human life
(we shall keep developing our mind)
in any case it's training if not updating your mind

Albert Schweitzer, "The Philosophy of Civilization"

Arthur Schopenhauer, "The Art of Controversy"
 
Carlos Castaneda must be the author that I reread the most. Second Nietzsche when I find a new translation in Spanish, English or Portuguese.

The Greek & Roman classics I highly recommend. The Decameron & The Golden Ass must be the most funny books I've ever read.
 
Niccolò Machiavelli: Il Principe (The Prince) (published 1532), because it really gives you a good understanding how getting power and staying in power works.
 
Really good stuff here.
As far as I am concerned, all computer books were big disappointment. All I needed to know was on the net.

Otherwise:
balanga said:
Everyone should read this.
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Agreed, that one is baseline. Those of us venturing into languages had to read it in school (in times when you still did learn something at school).

balanga said:
It basically foretold what has just happened all over the world over the last few years when a global Big Brother forced us into taking 'untested treatments' for 'something or other'...
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Not agreed. That one had already come true indeed in 1984. From then on (about the appearance of the Internet) we were mostly in uncharted territory.
Therefore my recommendation (strangely not yet mentioned here):

en.wikipedia.org

The Shockwave Rider - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

That one continues to paint the picture, now including the global network. This also has already come true, by far (only lacking the positive outcome of the book).
One of the ideas there is, that our government can and will use thermonuclear weapons against the own people if that seems the only means to avoid uncovering of a coverup. I think that is quite appropriate.

In the real timeline it took the powers that be about 15 years, somewhere until 2000, to get the reins into place again. 15 years during which things did indeed look quite good, and there might have been hope for a good outcome, for a society that would actually gain freedom through knowledge.

Didn't happen. Instead, we let a cabal of the super-rich take control of all our infrastructure. And they now just make the laws, one way or the other. The time of constitutional governments is over, these now have to do what suits the real powers.

BTW
Alain De Vos said:
1. Leviathan wakes
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This one's setting is very much what would be almost real today if we had done what we were supposed to and stayed on the moon in '73.
This civilisation has basically missed it's exit. You just need to look at the amount of stupidity in these forums and you know they will never manage it again. Kali yuga, reboot and retry.
 
PMc said:
Really good stuff here.
As far as I am concerned, all computer books were big disappointment. All I needed to know was on the net.
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The problem with a vast amount of the stuff on the web is that it is utter shite. I’m talking about blogs, YouTube and Stack Overflow. That’s the result of Dunning-Kruger and virtually free publication costs. It's also virtually free to create sockpuppet accounts to upvote this effluent output. If you aren’t already expert enough to be able to sort the wheat from the chaff then it’s a dubious way to learn. I’m not saying all books are good, but at least there is little risk of Pearson or O’Reilly putting up the money to publish a book written by someone that doesn’t have the slightest clue about the subject. You need to be more careful with Pakt and Manning and very careful with Leanpub.

Edit: I just checked who published the infamous C++ The Complete Reference by Herb Shildt. McGraw-Hill. So maybe I'm wrong and the reputable publishers aren't that reliable.
 
Paul Floyd said:
... You need to be more careful with Pakt and Manning and very careful with Leanpub...
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I mostly agree. But there are also good books. Manning: Extending and Embedding Perl (Tim Jenness, Simon Cozens), Object Oriented Perl (Damian Conway), C++ Concurrency in Action (Anthony Williams). Leanpub : Nikolai M. Josuttis C++ book series
 
_al said:
I mostly agree. But there are also good books. Manning: Extending and Embedding Perl (Tim Jenness, Simon Cozens), Object Oriented Perl (Damian Conway), C++ Concurrency in Action (Anthony Williams). Leanpub : Nikolai M. Josuttis C++ book series
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Yes, totally agree. I have the Williams and Josuttis books and recommend them all. Josuttis did start publishing with Pearson and later probably felt that he could manage the publishing himself (and keep more of the royalties).
 
Orwell, as a Trotskyist, described a totalitarian egalitarian dystopia, typical of Communist regimes. Huxley's dystopia describes better the decline of the West:


huxley_orwell1.jpg
 
Paul Floyd said:
The problem with a vast amount of the stuff on the web is that it is utter shite. I’m talking about blogs, YouTube and Stack Overflow. That’s the result of Dunning-Kruger and virtually free publication costs.
Click to expand...
That's why I said, was on the net. Nowadays you get drowned with crap. In the last century we had Usenet, and Usenet hat FAQs, and these were kinda peer-reviewed. And the other stuff came from universities. So I found wonderful papers about e.g. how TCP/IP works - I don't find these anymore, they're now indeed drowned in crap.
But that's just source and drain, supply and demand. What do people want their computer for? To watch pay-tv. (As if there weren't already enough unpaid crap available.) So why should there be anything useful on the net any longer?
 
rbranco said:
Orwell, as a Trotskyist, described a totalitarian egalitarian dystopia, typical of Communist regimes. Huxley's dystopia describes better the decline of the West:
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Well put, yes. Back in 1984, that was before the fall of the soviet union, the lefties didn't want to hear me saying 1984 is actually a critique on socialism.
But what we now have is apparently the "best" of both. As long as you play along, sit isolated and angstful before your gadget and swallow the abundance of crap labeled as "entertainment", everything is fine. But if you do not, if you perchance decide to protest against being forced to take experimental biogenetic drugs for nonexistant plagues, then you will quickly experience the strength of the totalitarian governments.

As I mentioned, in high school, those of us focussing on languages had to read both of these and do a differential analysis, just like in your comics. And this being approx. the generation that is now in power, it seems they didn't understand these as dystopiae and instead took them as guidebooks for what to create...
 
PMc said:
That's why I said, was on the net. Nowadays you get drowned with crap. In the last century we had Usenet, and Usenet hat FAQs, and these were kinda peer-reviewed. And the other stuff came from universities. So I found wonderful papers about e.g. how TCP/IP works - I don't find these anymore, they're now indeed drowned in crap.
But that's just source and drain, supply and demand. What do people want their computer for? To watch pay-tv. (As if there weren't already enough unpaid crap available.) So why should there be anything useful on the net any longer?
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I was going to mention usenet. A few decades ago I thought I knew a bit about C++ and started posting to comp.lang.c++.moderated. The mods were real experts (and put in a lot of time). I quickly learned that I didn't know that much after all.
 
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I can generally recommend Sun Tzu, and any manual on proceedings and rules/laws in any Organisation you find yourself in. That saved both my granddads from kicking their air addiction in their 20s.

Also, reading the "jungle book" (better known as the soldiers field manual) with a beer at hand can be very entertaining.
 
grahamperrin said:
Unfortunately I was too young to be drunk and high during the hippy years.
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Wow, this is really kickass. This is the level of knowledge/misinformation that people nowadays have on the internet?

In fact the book has nothing to do with Buddhism, it is just an instruction manual on how your mind works after you're dead.
(Compare this with your SSD: when it is dead, it still answers to commands -on a very basic level- and then it can be downloaded with a newly crafted firmware. Obviousely same goes for the mind.)
 
PMc said:
Therefore my recommendation (strangely not yet mentioned here):

en.wikipedia.org

The Shockwave Rider - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
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Just going by the wikipedia link, Shockwave Rider did turn out to be prophetic - As things stand now in US, particularly in Silicon Valley, the 1975 book is describing an unfortunate reality of today. I'm living that reality, so I'd know... even though that book is older than I am.
 
PMc said:
… the amount of stupidity in these forums …
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PMc said:
… This is the level of knowledge/misinformation that people nowadays have on the internet? …
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I chose <https://sh.reddit.com/comments/y51izo/comment/ishaxq0/> — a single, very poorly-rated comment — partly to demonstrate that if we look hard enough, we can find ignorance and/or negativity almost anywhere.

For post y51izo, <https://old.reddit.com/comments/y51izo/-/?sort=confidence> — ?sort=confidence indicating best — is a more positively thought-provoking view of the discussion. From the first (highest rated) comment:

… A European translator named W.Y. Evan Wentz translated … into English … the original purpose of it was lost. …
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PMc said:
You might try the Tibetan Book of the Dead.
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<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bardo_Thodol#English_translations> highlights the Wentz translation. One of my oldest friends, from around thirty years ago, is a former Buddhist; and Brighton Buddhist Centre is within walking distance, if I need it.


I'm not disinterested, however with regard to the rules for this organisation – and knowing that entire pages of discussion have been removed, in the past – I suspect that continuing discussion of religion in The FreeBSD Forums will not set us on a path to enlightenment ;-)
 
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